Odds & Ends

A Turkish university is now offering ufology classes to help students prepare for contact with extraterrestrial visitors. A research center at Akdeniz University in Antalya has launched “Ufology and Exopolitics” in its latest curriculum. Tutor of the course Erhan Kolbaşı told reporters that humanity can expect to meet aliens from outer space “within 10 or 15 years.” He hopes to prepare his students for the coming mass contact he envisions. The course will reportedly cover a conspiracy theory claiming that a secret organization within the US government known as Majestic 12 (MJ-12) has been covering up official knowledge of visiting extraterrestrials to protect national interests. Kolbaşı, who is also the deputy chair of the Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Center, also makes the claim that a number of current technologies were discovered through the reverse engineering of crashed UFOs, including fiber optics, microchips and night vision.

Dateline: Canada

An enraged shopper was filmed telling a mall Santa he wasn't real. Last week, a woman in a Toronto mall confronted a seasonal employee dressed as Santa Claus to yell angrily at him. Another shopper caught the tirade on cell phone. “Do you have a sleigh? You fucking dickhead? Do you have a sleigh?” the woman can be heard saying in the footage, “You’re not magic. You’re not even real! I heard about it when I was a young kid! You’re not real, man.” The witness who filmed the scene reportedly told the video licensing agency Viral Hog that Santa kept his cool and refrained from engaging with the angry shopper. Mall security eventually escorted the woman away from the area.

Dateline: Russia

A man posted photos of himself holding an armed fragmentation grenade moments before he died. According to local Russian news stations, a young man removed the pin from a live hand grenade to take photos of himself holding the explosive in his car. The man took a photo of his hand holding the grenade with the removed pin lying nearby and sent it to a friend in a text message. The friend responded, asking if he was okay. “It depends by what you mean 'OK,'” he reportedly replied. Moments later, the grenade exploded, and the man was dead. Police are not treating the death as a suicide, because they say the man had previously sent several photos of himself posing with the device to friends, indicating the incident was an accident. According to the Russian news service Interfax, the man believed the grenade was a “lemon” and expected to be able to replace the pin.

Dateline: India

A man admitted to a hospital for stomach pains is discovered to have nails, bolts and hundred of coins in his abdomen. Doctors at Sanjay Gandhi Hospital in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, India decided to perform an endoscopy on Maksud Khan, who had admitted himself to the hospital for what was originally thought to be food poisoning. The procedure reportedly revealed hundreds of coins, over three pounds of nails, shaving blades, glass, stones and a six-inch piece of rusted iron shackle lodged in his abdomen. Khan reportedly had been complaining of stomachaches for about three months before entering the hospital. According to his doctors, he very nearly died, as some of the nails had pierced the stomach and were causing internal bleeding. Over 15 pounds of foreign material was removed from his body. Khan's family members say they were unaware of his unhealthy eating habits. His doctors say he worked as a three-wheeler driver and could have swallowed the coins he received from customers. It is believed that Khan suffers from mental illness and began eating the strange objects after the onset of depression. He has told doctors that he will discontinue the practice.

Dateline: China

A bus commuter in China was fined for altering road markings to make his bus ride faster. A man in eastern China was fined around $150 after surveillance video caught him adding arrows to a turning lane's road markings in an attempt to make his daily commute faster. The footage, which was released by officials in the city Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, shows the man carrying a white paint bucket and brush into the left turn lane and adding a straight arrow, indicating that the lane could also be used by through traffic. According to the Modern Express, police tracked the man down, and he admitted to the deed. He allegedly added the arrow because he had noticed on his daily bus ride that while traffic in the straight-only lanes was consistently congested, the left-turn lane usually had space. He hoped that by changing the directional signs, he would make the ride smoother. In April this year, a driver in eastern Zhejiang was fined after surveillance footage captured him making his own parking space with chalk.